"Splendid! Now once again--a little more haughtily."

"Simpson--Simpson--Simpson."

Joan regarded her with affectionate approval.

"It's wonderful!" she said. "You might have been doing it all your life."

"What are you laughing at?" asked Aline.

"Nothing," said Joan. "I was just thinking of something. There's a young man who lives on the floor above this, and I was lecturing him yesterday on enterprise. I told him to go and find something exciting to do. I wonder what he would say if he knew how thoroughly I am going to practice what I preach!"

CHAPTER IV

In the morning following Aline's visit to Joan Valentine, Ashe sat in his room, the Morning Post on the table before him. The heady influence of Joan had not yet ceased to work within him; and he proposed, in pursuance of his promise to her, to go carefully through the columns of advertis.e.m.e.nts, however pessimistic he might feel concerning the utility of that action.

His first glance a.s.sured him that the vast fortunes of the philanthropists, whose acquaintance he had already made in print, were not yet exhausted. Brian MacNeill still dangled his gold before the public; so did Angus Bruce; so did Duncan Macfarlane and Wallace Mackintosh and Donald MacNab. They still had the money and they still wanted to give it away.

Ashe was reading listlessly down the column when, from the ma.s.s of advertis.e.m.e.nts, one of an unusual sort detached itself.

WANTED: Young Man of good appearance, who is poor and reckless, to undertake a delicate and dangerous enterprise.

Good pay for the right man. Apply between the hours of ten and twelve at offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole, 3, Denvers Street, Strand.

And as he read it, half past ten struck on the little clock on his mantelpiece. It was probably this fact that decided Ashe. If he had been compelled to postpone his visit to the offices of Messrs. Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole until the afternoon, it is possible that barriers of laziness might have reared themselves in the path of adventure; for Ashe, an adventurer at heart, was also uncommonly lazy. As it was, however, he could make an immediate start.

Pausing but to put on his shoes, and having satisfied himself by a glance in the mirror that his appearance was reasonably good, he seized his hat, shot out of the narrow mouth of Arundell Street like a sh.e.l.l, and scrambled into a taxicab, with the feeling that--short of murder--they could not make it too delicate and dangerous for him.

He was conscious of strange thrills. This, he told himself, was the only possible mode of life with spring in the air. He had always been partial to those historical novels in which the characters are perpetually vaulting on chargers and riding across country on perilous errands. This leaping into taxicabs to answer stimulating advertis.e.m.e.nts in the Morning Post was very much the same sort of thing. It was with fine fervor animating him that he entered the gloomy offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole. His brain was afire and he felt ready for anything.

"I have come in ans--" he began, to the diminutive office boy, who seemed to be the nearest thing visible to a Mainprice or a Boole.

"Siddown. Gottatakeyerturn," said the office boy; and for the first time Ashe perceived that the ante-room in which he stood was crowded to overflowing.

This, in the circ.u.mstances, was something of a damper. He had pictured himself, during his ride in the cab, striding into the office and saying. "The delicate and dangerous enterprise. Lead me to it!" He had not realized until now that he was not the only man in London who read the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the Morning Post, and for an instant his heart sank at the sight of all this compet.i.tion. A second and more comprehensive glance at his rivals gave him confidence.

The Wanted column of the morning paper is a sort of dredger, which churns up strange creatures from the mud of London's underworld. Only in response to the dredger's operations do they come to the surface in such numbers as to be noticeable, for as a rule they are of a solitary habit and shun company; but when they do come they bring with them something of the horror of the depths.

It is the saddest spectacle in the world--that of the crowd collected by a Wanted advertis.e.m.e.nt. They are so palpably not wanted by anyone for any purpose whatsoever; yet every time they gather together with a sort of hopeful hopelessness. What they were originally--the units of these collections--Heaven knows.

Fate has battered out of them every trace of individuality. Each now is exactly like his neighbor--no worse; no better.

Ashe, as he sat and watched them, was filled with conflicting emotions. One-half of him, thrilled with the glamour of adventure, was chafing at the delay, and resentful of these poor creatures as of so many obstacles to the beginning of all the brisk and exciting things that lay behind the mysterious brevity of the advertis.e.m.e.nt; the other, pitifully alive to the tragedy of the occasion, was grateful for the delay.

On the whole, he was glad to feel that if one of these derelicts did not secure the "good pay for the right man," it would not be his fault. He had been the last to arrive, and he would be the last to pa.s.s through that door, which was the gateway of adventure--the door with Mr. Boole inscribed on its ground gla.s.s, behind which sat the author of the mysterious request for a.s.sistance, interviewing applicants. It would be through their own shortcomings--not because of his superior attractions--if they failed to please that unseen arbiter.

That they were so failing was plain. Scarcely had one scarred victim of London's unkindness pa.s.sed through before the bell would ring; the office boy, who, in the intervals of frowning sternly on the throng, as much as to say that he would stand no nonsense, would cry, "Next!" and another dull-eyed wreck would drift through, to be followed a moment later by yet another. The one fact at present ascertainable concerning the unknown searcher for reckless young men of good appearance was that he appeared to be possessed of considerable decision of character, a man who did not take long to make up his mind. He was rejecting applicants now at the rate of two a minute.

Expeditious though he was, he kept Ashe waiting for a considerable time. It was not until the hands of the fat clock over the door pointed to twenty minutes past eleven that the office boy's "Next!" found him the only survivor. He gave his clothes a hasty smack with the palm of his hand and his hair a fleeting dab to accentuate his good appearance, and turned the handle of the door of fate.

The room a.s.signed by the firm to their Mr. Boole for his personal use was a small and dingy compartment, redolent of that atmosphere of desolation which lawyers alone know how to achieve.

It gave the impression of not having been swept since the foundation of the firm, in the year 1786. There was one small window, covered with grime. It was one of those windows you see only in lawyers' offices. Possibly some reckless Mainprice or harebrained Boole had opened it in a fit of mad excitement induced by the news of the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, and had been instantly expelled from the firm. Since then, no one had dared to tamper with it.

Gazing through this window--or, rather, gazing at it, for X-rays could hardly have succeeded in actually penetrating the alluvial deposits on the gla.s.s--was a little man. As Ashe entered, he turned and looked at him as though he hurt him rather badly in some tender spot.

Ashe was obliged to own to himself that he felt a little nervous.

It is not every day that a young man of good appearance, who has led a quiet life, meets face to face one who is prepared to pay him well for doing something delicate and dangerous. To Ashe the sensation was entirely novel. The most delicate and dangerous act he had performed to date had been the daily mastication of Mrs.

Bell's breakfast--included in the rent. Yes, he had to admit it--he was nervous: and the fact that he was nervous made him hot and uncomfortable.

To judge him by his appearance, the man at the window was also hot and uncomfortable. He was a little, truculent-looking man, and his face at present was red with a flush that sat unnaturally on a normally lead-colored face. His eyes looked out from under thick gray eyebrows with an almost tortured expression. This was partly owing to the strain of interviewing Ashe's preposterous predecessors, but princ.i.p.ally to the fact that the little man had suddenly been seized with acute indigestion, a malady to which he was peculiarly subject.

He removed from his mouth the black cigar he was smoking, inserted a digestive tabloid, and replaced the cigar. Then he concentrated his attention on Ashe. As he did so the hostile expression of his face became modified. He looked surprised and--grudgingly--pleased.

"Well, what do you want?" he said.

"I came in answer to--"

"In answer to my advertis.e.m.e.nt? I had given up hope of seeing anything part human. I thought you must be one of the clerks.

You're certainly more like what I advertised for. Of all the seedy bunches of dead beats I ever struck, the aggregation I've just been interviewing was the seediest! When I spend good money in advertising for a young man of good appearance, I want a young man of good appearance--not a tramp of fifty-five."

Ashe was sorry for his predecessors, but he was bound to admit that they certainly had corresponded somewhat faithfully to the description just given. The comparative cordiality of his own reception removed the slight nervousness that had been troubling him. He began to feel confident--almost jaunty.

"I'm through," said the little man wearily. "I've had enough of interviewing applicants. You're the last one I'll see. Are there any more hobos outside?"

"Not when I came in."

"Then we'll get down to business. I'll tell you what I want done, and if you are willing you can do it; if you are not willing you can leave it--and go to the devil! Sit down."

Ashe sat down. He resented the little man's tone, but this was not the moment for saying so. His companion scrutinized him narrowly.

"So far as appearance goes," he said, "you are what I want." Ashe felt inclined to bow. "Whoever takes on this job has got to act as my valet, and you look like a valet." Ashe felt less inclined to bow.

"You're tall and thin and ordinary-looking. Yes; so far as appearance goes, you fill the bill."

It seemed to Ashe that it was time to correct an impression the little man appeared to have formed.

"I am afraid," he said, "if all you want is a valet, you will have to look elsewhere. I got the idea from your advertis.e.m.e.nt that something rather more exciting was in the air. I can recommend you to several good employment agencies if you wish."

He rose. "Good-morning!" he said.

He would have liked to fling the ma.s.sive pewter inkwell at this little creature who had so keenly disappointed him.

"Sit down!" snapped the other.

Ashe resumed his seat. The hope of adventure dies hard on a Spring morning when one is twenty-six, and he had the feeling that there was more to come.

"Don't be a d.a.m.ned fool!" said the little man. "Of course I'm not asking you to be a valet and nothing else."

"You would want me to do some cooking and plain sewing on the side, perhaps?"